If any of you are visiting after reading my feature on space bacteria in the April issue of WIRED UK, you’ve arrived at the wrong place due to a mix-up in the byline. Head over to the new home of Not Exactly Rocket Science at Discover blogs.

For anyone still lurking around here, this blog has moved to Discover blogs. Come and find me in my new home. If anyone thinks that their feeds updated automatically and are confused by this, it may be because you need to manually set your readers with the new feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/notrocketscience/

I’ve been teasing a big announcement for a couple of days now, and after a technical delay, here it is – the death of Not Exactly Rocket Science. And the birth of Not Exactly Rocket Science After two brilliant years at ScienceBlogs, I’m evolving, migrating, metastasising, metamorphosing, (retro)transposing and otherwise moving to a new home…

To tie in with this week’s Research Blogging Awards announcement, I spent an enjoyable half-hour on Monday being interviewed by Dave Munger, who organised the awards. The interview is now up on the SEED website, with a title that made me smile. In it, I talk to Dave about winning the award, why and how…

Image, ironically, from FailBlog Warning: this post contains sentiment. If you are cynical and/or British, you might want to avert your eyes. Alternatively, read this and then go watch some Charlie Brooker. For those of you still around, bear with me. It is really hard to write something like this without falling into an abyss…

Like it or not, the golden arches of McDonalds are one of the most easily recognised icons of the modern world. The culture they represent is one of instant gratification and saved time, of ready-made food that can be bought cheaply and eaten immediately. Many studies have looked at the effects of these foods on…

We like to be in control of our own lives, and some of us have an automatic rebellious streak when we’re told what to do. We’re less likely to do a task if we’re ordered to do it than if we make the choice of our own volition. It seems that this effect is so…